reAct project International Conference 2012

The reAct Project - International Conference:

“Empowering teachers and learners for a digital world”

will be held in Valencia (Spain) on October 10, 2012.

ReAct, re-activating teachers and learners, is a transnational European project within the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union, KA3 (ICT). The project duration is from 01/01/2011 to 31/12/2012. The project website is at http://www.reactproject.eu

The percentage of youth who do not complete compulsory education is a significant social problem in Europe and one of the main challenges of professionals in training is promoting the intrinsic motivation of students. There is a huge disconnect between educational programs and what students expect to learn or see as relevant to their lives.

The goal of reAct is to develop a methodology based on enhancing the autonomy, creativity and collaboration of students and teachers through ICT tools including web 2.0, with a view to facilitating the development of learner motivation, and to explore how to integrate this innovation into existing educational programs.

The reAct project final conference, which brings this two year project to a close, will bring together a group of projects to discuss experiences and results centred around the main axes of the work done in the project. These are creativity and autonomy as facilitators of intrinsic motivation, and the challenges involved in integrating new approaches in traditional curricular contexts, which most innovative projects face. The conference will be a forum for these projects to share their perceptions around these axes and derive some conclusions. 

The structure of the reAct International Conference includes two keynote speeches. The first of these by Wim Veen (University of Delft, NL) will focus on innovation in the classroom, the other will be by Lieve van den Brand (European Commission, responsible for educational policy design)will look at educational innovation from a policy perspective. These will be followed by three round tables on creativity, autonomy, and innovation. Finally a brief presentation of the conclusions of the discussions will be made. 

The conference is to be webstreamed and the videos will be available later on in the project website http://www.reactproject.eu/conference_en/online-conference/